


Bits and Pieces

by Anonymous



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Nonnies Made Me Do It, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 11:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 17,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18549307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A collection of drabbles, ficlets and snippets.





	1. Fake/Pretend Relationship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The S1 pretend relationship/undercover as dating fic where Barry is very proud of himself for coming up with the idea. The reclusive Dr Wells going out to date is bound to attract the attention of the person with particle accelerator vengeance on their mind without looking like an obvious set-up and Barry can make sure he's as safe as possible, it's two birds with one stone. He didn't even have to argue that hard to convince him!

"I'm not letting you go alone," Barry said stubbornly and watched Doctor Wells pull off his glasses and rub at the bridge of his nose.

"I appreciate –" he started, and Barry rushed forward.

"I'll go with you," he said. _Keep you safe_ , he didn't say, because he doubted Wells would appreciate the implication that he couldn't take care of himself.

"Barry –"

"Like a bodyguard?" Cisco asked. "Because that's not gonna scare them off at all."

"No, I can –"

"I suppose you might be able to watch from a distance and take quick runs closer if you see anything suspicious," Caitlin offered slowly. "But, well, the Flash isn't exactly…"

"Discreet?" Wells offered, when it seemed clear she was struggling for a term.

"It's the lightning, isn't it," Barry said, mouth twitching.

"Nah, it's the localized wind tunnel effect," Cisco said. "I don't know why we keep loose papers in the lab any more, seriously."

"You're not fast enough to avoid being seen entirely, Barry – in fact, your speed would bring more attention than it would otherwise. You can move faster than sound, not light."

One day he would, Barry promised himself. He'd move so fast nobody would even see the blur of him passing unless he wanted them to. He was pretty sure he could. At least, Dr. Wells seemed sure he could on those occasions he started musing aloud about the potential applications of his speed. He was pretty sure it was a psychological barrier keeping him back more than physiological one, that he needed the gradual increase and more thorough understanding of his abilities before he tried for the next big thing. He always defaulted into moving at a speed that was impressive to anyone else but nowhere near what he was really capable of.

"If it'll bring more attention I won't use it."

"How do you expect to keep close enough to Doctor Wells to keep him safe without using your speed?" Caitlin asked, frustrated. "Cisco's right, it'll be obvious if you try and watch him…"

Barry glanced at her, trying to push his mind into working at the same speed it had to when he was running. "I'll have to be close to him in a way that doesn't look suspicious, then," he said. He thought from the way Wells' brows had started to knit together that he already knew what Barry was getting at and was trying to work on a way to dissuade him and turned to him quickly. "And you haven't – you've been kinda reclusive since the particle accelerator explosion, right?"

"Right," Wells agreed cautiously, because he couldn't exactly deny it. Barry didn't think he really went anywhere in Central without some form of work-related reason behind his appearance. Or, well, without the Flash involved in some way.

It wasn't like before, obviously, when Doctor Wells had been – still was, to Barry, but probably not to most people – a rock star among physicists and there had been people who followed his every move, but he was pretty sure 'disgraced' physicist Doctor Wells would still get column inches for doing something like –

"I know a reason for you to leave your seclusion and go somewhere for our metahuman to spot you," Barry said, almost tripping over his words. "It'd be suspicious if you just started going out again for no reason, right?"

"Oops, didn't really factor that in," Cisco muttered, exchanging a look with Caitlin.

"Well, I think – I mean –"

"Barry," Wells said, not impatiently, Barry thought, but still somewhat more abrupt than he usually was with him.

"I'll be your date," Barry said. He carefully didn't look at either Cisco or Caitlin. "That's a reason for you to go out _and_ for me to be near you on those outings – that's good, right?"

Wells looked at him. His lips parted momentarily but he didn't speak, just stared. It was, if Barry was perfectly honest, far more discouraging than any of the incredibly cutting things he'd been expecting Wells to say in response to his stupid idea.

"That... does make... _some_ kind of sense?" Caitlin said slowly, although it sounded to Barry as if she felt like she should probably support the idea for fear of what he might come up with next.

"Yeah, it's bound to get something in the entertainment pages at least," Cisco said. 

Wells somehow managed to spare him a withering look without taking his eyes off Barry. It was terrifying and impressive. "Barry, I don't think –"

"It practically guarantees our metahuman will hear about it," Barry said hurriedly. "I mean, you," he floundered, waving a hand at Wells in his chair and then at himself. He tried to work out if he actually had any idea how he'd even meant to end that sentence in the first place, and why didn't he think before he spoke, he had whole _seconds_ to do it in.

"With a scandalously young man half your age," Caitlin filled in smoothly, perfectly straight-faced, nodding at Wells. He made an incredulous face Barry was secretly fond of seeing, so long as he wasn't the one provoking it.

"Yeah, if our metahuman isn't already watching you he'll _definitely_ hear about that," Cisco said. 

"Or she," Caitlin said.

"Or she," Cisco agreed cheerfully with a thumbs up to Caitlin. "Papers still love Doctor Wells. Or, love to hate. I mean – no – uh –"

"We get it, Cisco," Barry said hastily, catching the barely concealed wince Wells gave out of the corner of his eye.

"Right," Cisco said quickly. "Scandal! What could be better?"

"It would be... rather strange from most people's point of view, wouldn't it?" Wells said musingly, and Barry carefully tamped down on any feeling of relief because the man hadn't quite agreed yet, he could probably still find a dozen reasons not to do this and then Barry would have to try and come up with another way to make sure he was safe – wait –

"Strange?" Barry said blankly. "Why strange?" 

Wells looked at him, eyebrow raised as if he thought Barry had said something particularly naive. "A bright young thing like you, Barry, dating a disgraced old cripple?"

Barry opened his mouth instantly, ready to argue and defend the validity of his fake interest in the context of their fake relationship, and said the first thing in his head because he was an _idiot_. "You're not old," he said, and the raised eyebrow hitched itself a little higher. "Or disgraced. Okay, maybe a little disgraced. But I mean you're still pretty hot stuff – physics! I mean in physics –" 

He glanced wildly at Caitlin and Cisco, feeling an embarrassed flush beginning to creep up his face, and saw that Caitlin was valiantly covering her mouth in an attempt to hide her smile of embarrassed sympathy and Cisco was grinning like a man who only needed a tub of popcorn to complete his hilarious movie-watching experience. "You know I – anyone who knows me knows I –"

"Like big brains and cannot lie?" Cisco offered helpfully, actually not helpful at all. "You're the number one member of the Harrison Wells fanclub?" 

"I like you," Barry told Wells firmly, ignoring Cisco. _Cisco_ was a member of the Harrison Wells fan club. If such a thing existed. Which Barry would have no idea about. Or interest in. "We're friends, right? If we can be friends it can't be that big a leap to – to thinking we could –"

"Still somewhat of a jump," Wells said mildly, cutting smoothly in before Barry's inability to complete his sentence could become obvious. Barry gave him a grateful smile, then remembered he was somehow, after months of working together, still a ridiculous fanboy at heart and everybody in the room now knew it and pretended to be really interested in the nearest wall. "Especially since most would have a hard time understanding why we're friends in the first place. But if you really think you can pull it off –"

"Of course I can," Barry said instantly, almost a little insulted on Wells' behalf somehow, at the idea someone wouldn't consider themselves lucky to date him, a man so intelligent he could – and _did_ – change the world. If Barry really was dating him, he certainly would.

"Just talk science to him, Doctor Wells, I'm sure Barry won't have any problems looking dreamy and smitten then," Cisco said and Caitlin hit his arm lightly.

"No, but you don't really need to act like – like a TV Valentine's Day couple," she said, obviously still struggling a little not to laugh herself. "Most people will be quite happy to read the subtext in if you give them a few nudges that way first, I'm sure."

"True," Cisco nodded with mock-sagacity. "Anyway, the real question, Doctor Wells," he continued with false seriousness, "is can _you_ pull off being interested in Barry."

"Hey!" Barry complained.

"I very much doubt that will be the problem," Wells said wryly. Barry knew he was just talking about the necessity of the deception succeeding but he still felt a little flattered.

"So you've agreed then? We'll try and do it this way?"

Wells looked at him for a long moment; long enough that Barry started to worry he was going to say no anyway, force him to try and come up with something else now that his mind had gone totally blank of ideas so close to the success of one. Then he sighed and nodded. 

Barry let out a relieved huff of air and grinned brightly. "Cool," he said, because he really couldn't think of anything else to say and it felt like he _should_ say something to acknowledge the agreement. He had a paranoid feeling eyes were being rolled at him internally.

"I suppose research is required," Wells said after a moment. He was starting to smile almost reluctantly, and Barry couldn't help but grin back because it _was_ kind of ridiculous, now he was over the triumph of actually getting Doctor Wells to agree. He was glad it looked like they'd be able to laugh about this, maybe even have fun. "Where do people go on a date when they're high profile but trying to appear discreet?"

Barry exchanged looks with Caitlin and Cisco. "Umm," he said.

"Don't look at me," Cisco said. "I vote for asking Google for the most expensive restaurant in town." 

" _Too_ expensive and they might actually be serious about protecting their diners' privacy," Caitlin said. "We want people to hear about Doctor Wells and – and – dates. Dating. Going outside of S.T.A.R. labs regularly."

"I still vote for asking Google," Cisco said. "Barry –"

"You think I can afford expensive restaurants? With my salary? With my calorie intake on my salary? I am definitely poorer than you guys."

"Oh, point," Cisco said, nodding, and then froze, a slow, terrifying grin forming on his face. "Wait, wait, Barry, oh my God –"

"No, Cisco," Caitlin said instantly, pale cheeks flushing a little.

"Does this mean –"

"No, Cisco," Wells said sharply, apparently having worked out what Cisco was about to say, which left Barry in last place for once.

"Doctor Wells will be your sugar daddy?"

Barry stared at him. "You know what, I'm just – I'm gonna – go find a cat stuck up a tree. Rescue. Call me if you need help or decide on a restaurant or – bye!"


	2. 100 Words: Speed Force

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Speed Force is different for every speedster.

For Eobard the Speed Force has always worn the Flash's face.  _This is how it's done,_  it tells him kindly and because the Flash is smiling, blurred but bright with obvious affection –

It hardly takes a cosmic entity to know a certain weakness of Eobard's.

('Professor Zoom', his students used to call him, some with mockery, some with affection. Teaches Flash physics, oops, chronodynamics.)

Nothing has ever hurt more than meeting the man himself and seeing his lip curl with loathing instead, but he knows Eobard's name and Eobard can live with hate if it means he never looks away.


	3. 100 Words: Hypocrisy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At its finest.

"Great," Barry said, grimacing, "another Time Remnant."

"Another what?" Thawne said incredulously, folding his arms across his chest and angling his head in a way Barry knew to read as him raising an eyebrow with his mask on. "Barry. Please tell me you haven't been screwing up so badly as to leave alternate versions of yourself littering your own timeline."

"...no?" Barry said after a moment.

He was almost certain from the way Thawne's arm blurred out of sync for an instant that his  ~~mentor~~  enemy had just smacked his face into his palm faster than even he could register.


	4. Waiting

Dr. Harrison Wells could often be found near the comatose body of Barry Allen, reading over the many reports produced by the Norris Commission, glancing every now and then – every seven minutes and fifteen seconds – at the apparatus surrounding the sleeping body, a quick visual check that all was well.

Occasionally he would recite particularly dreary lines to his captive audience and then indulge himself with gentle mockery - "Ah, I see you've fallen asleep. Not to worry, Mr. Allen, I'd be surprised if even the author managed to make it to the end of that sentence without doing the same."

Sometimes he would hiss softly as he read, mouth twisting with what might have been called bitter self-mockery if there had been someone other than the sleeping boy to admit to seeing it.

Employees – now former employees, he had the resignation letters – came and went, often shooting him angry or pitying looks. Investigators came and went. Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow stayed.

The boy slept on.

Barry Allen was a beautiful sleeper. Years of watching through electronic eyes had inadequately prepared Eobard for the reality of having him so close – for the brush of his eyelashes against his cheek, the warmth in the rise and fall of his chest, the realization that an entire world hid in the movements of his eyes behind closed lids.

Like so many things regarding Barry, in person he was simply _more_.

There had been a past-future in which Eobard Thawne had thought Barry Allen to be golden. He hadn't changed his mind about that, although there was much regarding the Flash that he had – all gold was an empty promise after all, weakness hidden by gleam. How soft it was, how fragile, but didn't it shine beautifully?

And the Flash... how brightly he had shone. How weak he had turned out to be beneath the polished gleam history gave great men.

Eobard loved him once, he was sure. He wouldn't have been able to hate half so fiercely if he hadn't. It still crawled up his throat like bile on occasion, that love, flooded his mouth with bitterness.

He'd hated the Flash enough that he'd been willing to risk his entire existence for the momentary but visceral pleasure of knowing the beat of his heart between his fingers. It was impossible to grasp now just how much he must once have loved him.

He reached over, held one hand frozen above the boy's chest, fingers spread to cover a symbol he'd once ached to put his fist through. The boy continued to breathe, soft and slow, so far from Eobard in his dreams he might have still been centuries away. The Flash had been nameless then, untouchable. Barry -

“I could kill you,” he whispered. He enjoyed reminding Barry and himself of that when they were alone, enjoyed the truth of it in the humming of his hand and the stillness of Barry's body. “I won't, but I could. Doesn't that mean your life belongs to me?”


	5. Grief (Nora Allen & 'Harrison Wells')

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon divergence AU

Nora meets Dr. Harrison Wells at a grief support group. She wouldn't recognize him in the street as anything other than a handsome gentleman but he's apparently very big news in certain circles if the way Barry reacts when she absently tells him she's met a Dr. Wells is any indication.

He's quiet in the therapy sessions. He doesn't really want to be there and it shows. Every word about his wife is dragged from him with effort, like his throat closes against the mention of her name.

"My fault," he says once, bitterly. "I killed her."

Her heart aches at how certain he sounds, how furious and bitter and resigned.

"It was an accident," she reminds him and he looks sharply at her as if focusing on her properly for the first time. She understands suddenly why people make such a fuss about 'piercing' eyes.

"An accident, yes," he says slowly, as if he's blamed himself for so long he finds it hard to remember how it really happened. "Still, it was my fault."

Their grief doesn't match anywhere except its intensity – Nora knows she is not responsible for Henry's death in any way, it was no accident that took Henry from her and Barry, she has something else to blame -

"An intruder," she always says. "Someone broke in one night. It was dark, I couldn't see – they stabbed my husband, stabbed me. I lived. He didn't."

She never says  _something tore through my house in a blur of light, so fast I couldn't tell what it was or what it wanted until it reached for my son and my husband put himself in its way._ She never says, _I didn't even know I was bleeding too until it was long gone and I'd dragged myself to Henry's side._

Her son insists it was a man.


	6. Control

He vibrates in Eobard's lap, pulling back to laugh self-consciously. "There," he says, "See?"

Eobard hums thoughtfully, sliding his hand over the bare skin of Barry's back – he runs hot now, thrums against his palm like lightning trapped in human form. "Quite the problem to have," he says and Barry squirms uncomfortably, as if suddenly aware of where he is and what he is doing.

Eobard spreads his fingers out over his lower back and pulls him in. "It doesn't matter if you slip with me," he says, smiling. But with someone who doesn't know who and what Barry is, it could be disastrous. 

Barry understands his meaning and grimaces before asking hopefully, "Ideas?" 

Eobard tugs him down for another kiss, encourages him to open his mouth, lean in, lose himself in action. Barry slips again in the middle of grinding against him and Eobard puts his hands on his hips, holds him down until his shudders cease.

"Are you concentrating?" He asks.

"Yes," Barry lies, flushing brightly, his eyes wide and dark.

"Try and pinpoint the second you lose control," Eobard says. "Tell me exactly what makes you so eager you lose track of your speed and perception thereof."

"I don't – don't know," Barry says, shifting restlessly, still vigilantly aware of legs he thinks can't feel him. He leans forward to chase Eobard's mouth eagerly, pressing artless kisses against it. One hand works its way under his clothes, fingers vivid points of heat spread out over his abdomen.

"This is important," Eobard says. "You can't afford to be so careless about your abilities."

"Right," Barry breathes.

A tremble runs through him when Eobard pushes a hand between them to stroke him, but it's not quite beyond what the ordinary human is capable of. Another second more, however – he waits to see if Barry notices it.

He does, and stills – from a normal perspective it takes two seconds, from Barry's it is probably something closer to two minutes, his perception of time altered – saying, "Waitwaitait," the words starting to run together as he says them almost on top of each other.

Eobard lifts his hand away, returning it to Barry's hip to steady him as he loses concentration, struggling to readjust to suddenly moving at the speed of an ordinary human being.

(Such a  _waste_.)

"Think I've got it," Barry gasps, pressing his face into the crook of his neck, panting just fast enough to make someone else concerned. "We should – we should keep going? So I can practice keeping control? For science," he adds hopefully, and Eobard smothers a laugh.

"Of course," he agrees gravely. "You should always test a hypothesis multiple times to prove its validity."


	7. A/B/O universe confusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An accident results in Barry skidding to a stop in an A/B/O universe and he's all '???' because he thinks it's a canon divergent AU/timeline at first until the oddities start piling up high enough even he can't ignore them. And because it's ingrained in him and he doesn't really know what else to do he's off to Harribard, flailing around and going '?!!'

"Oh man," he told the empty lab with a despairing kind of incredulity. "I'm really gonna just run to him, aren't I."

It wasn't a question and didn't need an answer, but he somehow felt like he was being judged anyway. Hell with that, he decided, squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath. He wanted answers about things connected to his abilities, there had always been really only one place for him to go, hadn't there? It had practically been trained into him –

Oh.

Of course. Thawne absolutely would.

He skidded to a stop in the cortex of S.T.A.R. Labs, taking what felt like a long minute just to stare. Dr. Wells sat perfectly still, hand hovering over the controls of his wheelchair, the corner of his mouth just beginning to twitch up into a sardonic smile, and Barry shuddered in place, torn between turning right around and running back out, trying to deal with the weirdness outside himself and just –

"I know you can see and hear me right now," he blurted. Cisco's mouth was open, his hand just unfolding at his side, arm about to move in one of his expressive gestures. Caitlin's eyes were caught mid-blink, her annoyed expression turned absurd – 

And he was certain he'd just seen Dr. Wells' eyes open as he ran in, the tail-end of a blink that should have been as slow as Caitlin's and was instead just as fast as if Barry was trying to register a reflex blink at what anyone else would consider 'normal' speed.

Cisco's hand started to rise, the movement as slow as a mountain's growth, Caitlin's eyes continued to close with the certainty of the sun going down, and Dr. Wells stayed perfectly frozen, staring straight through Barry like anyone and everyone else when he was moving so fast. How stupid would he feel if the Dr. Wells of this timeline – universe? – wasn't even –

"Eobard Thawne," Barry said and the man's eyes opened and narrowed, the approaching smile frozen on his face twisting into something Barry didn't recognize.

"Barry," he said, his voice odd and wary and Barry suddenly realized that he thought Barry had gained the upper hand, had the faintest clue what he was doing, and he had to laugh.

"Don'truneedttalk," he said quickly, words shapeless and merging even in his own ears. "Univline?"

"One minute," Thawne said and Barry blinked and let the world catch them up.

"-rous – whoa, dude," Cisco said, his excited gesture ruined by the instinctive recoil that overtook him at Barry appearing even more out of nowhere than usual.

"Mr. Allen," Dr. Wells acknowledged, eyes glittering, and Barry had to swallow hard, an uncertain knot of emotions he had no idea how to unravel rising up to choke him. _Thawne_ , he reminded himself, trying to shove back the image of long gone happier times, Caitlin and Cisco and Dr. Wells in the cortex, on the comms in his ear, ready to help him. He had to shake off the urge to just sink back into the easy camaraderie, the blissful ignorance –

"- you okay?" Caitlin said uncertainly. "Barry? You don't smell quite right –"

Barry felt the wistfulness shatter, forcibly reminded that it might have looked like he'd only gone back in time but there was far more trouble going on that.

"Fine," he managed. Dr. Wells' eyes weren't the only ones to narrow at the obvious lie but Barry couldn't bring himself to look away, paranoid that if he took his eyes off him for a second – "Fine," he repeated, a little steadier, assuring himself that it would be. The more convinced he was that he was telling the truth, the more everybody else relaxed, and _holy mother of God_ , could people in this universe smell lies?

...Did he even have a secret identity here? Not that he had much of one on his own earth, to be honest.

He shook his head for a moment. Not important, he wasn't going to be stuck here for long anyway. (Right? Right.)

"A word, Mr. Allen?" Dr. Wells said, and Barry found himself moving instinctively to follow him because everything was right about doing so – Cisco sing-songing 'someone's in trouble~', Caitlin making shooing motions with her hands, his own feet falling naturally into the stride he used to take to keep pace with the wheelchair.

"I don't know why you bother calling me that," Barry muttered as he started forward into the wheelchair's wake. "Just call me Barry. You know you want to."

Thawne had loved saying his name, loved to drag the syllables out, seemed to savor the sound as he let them fall from his lips like a bomb, a revelation: _Barry. Allen._ He'd taken such joy in shaping each part like a dagger Barry was a little startled to remember there'd never been a clue how important knowing it was to him until the mask had finally dropped with Hannibal Bates' death.

There was a stifled noise from either Cisco or Caitlin – Barry's money was on Cisco – and Dr. Wells gave him another of those sharp little looks Barry had always wondered at the intensity of.

"That would hardly be appropriate," Dr. Wells said smoothly and Barry snorted.

"'Appropriate'," he said, then remembered they were still within hearing distance of Caitlin and Cisco and added, "I'm not your subordinate."

"That wasn't what I was referring to," Dr. Wells said, and there was a new quality to the way he glanced at Barry then, a puzzled kind of inquiry, as if Barry was missing something obvious. Barry kept his mouth firmly shut in case he was.

The silence was uncomfortable, but that discomfort was less than a fraction of what Barry suspected he _should_ have been feeling. He'd walked like this beside Dr. Wells too often, silence or no silence, terrible world-changing revelations or no.

They stopped at the office Dr. Wells had rarely left before the particle accelerator exploded and rarely saw after. Barry shot him a puzzled look, having almost expected the Time Vault, and then remembered that Cisco and Caitlin were no longer in the loop and – (probably) safe in their ignorance – they might need to find 'Dr. Wells' for some reason and it would better for all involved if nobody disappeared from the map.

"Are there cameras in here?" Barry asked, meaning the hidden ones Thawne was so fond of, but then he remembered he hadn't needed hidden ones in the labs and winced at the idiocy of the question.

"Of course there are," Dr. Wells said, staring at his desk, emptied of all the paperwork that probably hadn't kept him up during the nights before the accelerator went online but had made it look like it. "This was – and remains – a billion dollar facility, Barry. Everywhere is monitored. However –" he didn't blur even to Barry's eyes, but Barry knew he had to have done something because he casually stepped out of the wheelchair, drawing himself up to his full height. "You don't have to worry about Cisco or Caitlin accessing the footage, even if they weren't expecting us to have our little chat in the treadmill room."

Barry sucked in a breath and forced himself very consciously not to react further. "Right," he said tightly and watched Thawne tilt his head, staring at him as if he could take him apart with his eyes.

"Well?" He said at last. "Go on, Barry. You need help?"

"Right," Barry said again. "Yes. I – uh – you know I'm not your – um – your timeline's Barry, right?"

"My timeline's Barry," Thawne said and smiled that thin, grimly amused smile that had been difficult to like for everyone who wasn't Barry, Cisco or Caitlin, apparently. "You think too linearly. You are not and will never be the Barry of 'my' timeline."

Barry shook his head. "I know you know what I meant," he said and preferred to think of his tone as 'irritated' rather than 'plaintive'. From the way Thawne smiled he guessed he was wrong. "I'm not the Barry of this timeline, the timeline that resulted from you –" he stopped and closed his eyes.

"Killing your mother," Thawne said, blunt and matter of fact, and Barry jerked his head up and stared at him, sure the floor had lurched under his feet for a second.

He opened his mouth a couple of times but couldn't get his tongue to work. He stared at the empty chair behind Thawne. "Yeah," he croaked at last.

"I suspected baby speedster's first time-travel as the problem," Thawne said lightly. "But you're certain – "

"I've time-traveled before," Barry said indignantly.

"Without attracting time wraiths or altering anything you didn't mean to?"

Barry opened his mouth then paused as he considered his previous experiences and thought better of it. "Technically," he muttered.

"Are you sure?" Thawne said. Barry bristled a little at the condescension he could almost hear, the arrogance the man was famed for but Barry had never had directed at him in any form harsher than mentorship.

"I know things can change when you time travel," Barry said. "But this is – it's pretty obvious this has got to be another earth to mine. I just don't know how I got here or what I did wrong or why I can't just..." he trailed off, frustrated.

Thawne laughed, honest but joyless, and sat back in the wheelchair. "How obvious?"

Barry stared at him helplessly, unsure how to even begin. "Obvious," he said. He thought about the ridiculously strong but weird colognes and perfumes, the interactions between everybody at the station, the nostril-flaring, the remarks about his 'scent', the way one suspect was 'he' and another wasn't, the forms where instead of the M/F option he was expecting he got A and B and Ω Type I/Type II boxes instead.

"Seriously it's – what the hell?" Barry threw up his hands, then the realized that the gesture had more than a little of his own Doctor Wells' occasional moments of theatricality in it and had to suppress a wince.

The Dr. Wells of this strange universe leaned forward in his chair, mouth twitching in a way Barry was familiar with as 'if I were anybody else I wouldn't bother suppressing my laughter here'. He used to like that look. It had made Dr. Wells more... approachable, more human in a way the wheelchair never had – the wheelchair had made him look vulnerable, brought down to earth, Icarus if he had survived his flight, but it hadn't really made him any less distant. For Barry, it had only increased the sense of 'admire, but at a respectable distance' he'd felt around him.

And then of course it had turned out the Dr. Wells Barry had so admired – your nerdy little science crush, Iris used to call it before everything with the particle accelerator – hadn't really been Dr. Wells at all.

Barry grimaced and wondered why the man was bothering now. He knew – they both knew – what was the point any more?

"Because it makes you comfortable," Thawne said and Barry jumped a little. "And less likely to try and punch me in the face in front of company. This may take some time to figure out, Barry."

"Wouldn't want to ruin your nice stolen life," Barry said acidly and the amused twitching at the corner of the man's mouth turned to out and out laughter, the unrestrained sort that he'd never heard from Dr. Wells, although it had apparently been something the real man did easily.

(Like he became a completely different person, Dr. McGee had said. Funny. He bet Thawne had laughed to himself watching that in the time vault.)

"Oh, Barry," Thawne said and the fond amusement in his voice burned.

"Shut up," Barry said. "Don't –" _Call me that?_ What else was he supposed to call him? It was his name! It was just… the way he said it.

(He used to like that too.)

He took a deep breath that didn't really do much to calm him. "I – I don't know where to start," he said helplessly.

"Mmhm," Wells – _Thawne_ said – and it was so hard to look at him in his chair, looking at Barry with such fondness and exasperation and _not_ call him Dr. Wells, not see him as the man who had mentored him, helped and supported... and been the exact opposite of the one who had looked him in the eye and said simply and easily, 'I hate you', as if that was enough reason for – for _everything_ he'd done.

"I don't – this universe, it's _crazy_ , I don't know – I don't understand –"

"What's so hard to understand?"

"Everything!" Barry said, throwing up his hands again. "I can't even fill out basic paperwork, I – what the hell does A/B/O mean? I don't get why 'he' and 'she' are only used sometimes? 'Cause sometimes it's 'he', and then another guy is 'hae'? Or it's 'she' for someone and than another woman is 'shae' or… I'm sure I heard something else too but then they said they preferred beta pronouns?"

"Wait," Thawne said, leaning forward. "You don't understand – basic biology? Culture?"

"Yes! No! This isn't right, I don't get it –"

"Barry. May I ask –" he stopped and shook his head a little, looking a little bemused and a lot fascinated at the idea that seemed to have occurred to him. "In your universe, on your world, humanity is... there are no alpha/beta/omega dynamics?"

"No! Unless we're talking outdated bullshit about 'alpha males' I guess, but I don't think we are, so I don't know what you mean? There's – male and female, XX and XY, she, he, his, hers – people like to think it's pretty binary? Most of the time?"

"Binary," Thawne said, staring, looking as if the very idea was a revelation. "Male and female? That's the division of sexes for you?"

"Uh, yeah?" Barry said. "I mean, it's a bit – a lot, really – more complicated than that, but generally speaking that's what most people think, yeah.”

"Barry. There are six sexes."

" _What_."

"If you want to be contentious – and wrong – three sexes and six genders."

"I – no – what?"

"Alpha types one and two, beta types one and two, and omega types one and two. ...Perhaps it would be best to find you a biology textbook?"

"Six," Barry said blankly. "So, like... an alpha male and female? Literally? And there's...” He shook his head at himself and snorted a little at his own idiocy. “ _Obviously_ there's physical differences between the sexes, but I mean, there's physical differences between the types too? So a... beta male isn't the same as an alpha male or... whatever?"

"Quite different," Thawne said, with that dry undertone that had often confused Barry, made him half-suspect he was the butt of a joke only Dr. Wells seemed to be in on. (And he had been. So there was that.)

"How?" Barry blurted out, then spent a generous half-second asking himself if he was really sure he wanted to know before inevitably concluding that of course he did – it was an entirely different world out there. He _had_ to know. "...I think I need that biology textbook. Or maybe 'my first book of the human body' or something."

"I'll find one with nice simple illustrations," Thawne said and had a brightly colored hardcover book in his hand before Barry could finish deciding to be insulted.

"'Key Issues: The A, B, and O of Understanding Puberty'...?"

"You have to start somewhere," Thawne said. "We can discuss genetics and reproductive systems in greater and more accurate detail once you have the basics." He smiled, looking far too anticipatory for Barry's peace of mind. "I suspect your response is going to be _fascinating_ ," he said.

Barry shot him a filthy look before turning the same suspicious glare onto the book. Nothing that bright and geometric could be trusted.

"There are worse," Thawne said. "Would you prefer something even simpler? There could be some crossover into cultural issues. Always helpful. 'Daddy has a new Alphafriend' is apparently very good for your average pre-schooler, given that you can still find a copy a century from now. 'My Step-Omega Is An Alien' too."

Barry stared at him. He took the book cautiously and transferred his stare to it. "This is gonna be weirder than I thought, isn't it."

"Yours is the weird perspective here, Barry."

He flipped through the book, then went back and read it again half a second slower. It still didn't help. He glanced at Thawne and found him staring at him, looking fascinated.

"Okay," Barry said slowly. "Omega definitely not the same thing as beta or alpha, then."

He read the book again.

Thawne hummed as he waited, fingers tapping against the chair's controls. He straightened as Barry dropped the book and vibrated in place for a moment as he tried to work out if he wanted to run immediately for more information or not.

"I have so many questions," Barry said, head swimming with new information that suddenly made it very difficult to keep his gaze on Thawne's face. Like being told not to look at something just made you whip your head round to stare, the knowledge that was now in his head – entirely different subsets of genitalia, oh God, was that going to make his job in forensics difficult, and he had a possible example right in front of him – _stop it, brain!_ "So many."

"Such as?"

"How does sex determination work? _Why_ did a trinary sex determination system develop alongside a binary sex determination system –"

"Because it didn't. You're bringing your own cultural and social context to bear on it. Let me guess – you think something like 'alpha male' or 'omega female' or 'beta female' when you try to divide the sexes?"

"Yes?" Barry offered uncertainly.

"There are some cultures that do so, but generally speaking terms such as male or female are applied to animals of dimorphic appearances. They serve no purpose for humans, obviously."

"Obviously," Barry echoed. He found his eyes drifting downwards and forced them up again because _no_. There was no new biological science completely out of his sphere of reference strange enough to excuse that.

"What would be the point? You are alpha, beta or omega and of those you may be type one or two."

"One or two?"

"For reference, you, according the medical records I have on file, are a type II omega."

Barry wrestled with the ridiculously strong feeling of disorientation and somehow managed to keep himself perfectly still.

"Miss West is a type I alpha, if you were wondering."

"Not really," Barry said faintly. "Give me a moment. Uh. Why that order? I mean... you know what, I don't know what I mean."

"The oldest hominid fossils on record are... female, I think you'd say? It's always been assumed that they were the first type."

"That's... cool. Interesting. Uh. Stupid question maybe but... It's not possible to... overwrite another universe's version of yourself like you can when you time travel, is it?"

Thawne's eyes widened and Barry _felt_ him tapping into the Speed Force, stretching his senses out, seeking -

"You had best hope not," he said. "Or we're in a great deal of trouble."


	8. Phasing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of that ~~speed force dirty talk~~ phasing speech.

"What was that?" Caitlin said blankly.

"I know," Cisco said, staring at the ceiling.

"No, really, what was that?"

"A pep talk," Cisco said. "A really weirdly intimate... okay, no, Dr. Wells totally just dirty talked Barry to the speedster equivalent of orgasm over the comms."

"I very much doubt phasing through solid matter is Barry's equivalent to orgasm," Caitlin said, keeping her eyes just as solidly fixed to a blank wall as Cisco's were to the ceiling.

"Yeah, that would be very uncomfortable for his partner, I guess," Cisco said. "Seriously though: they had phone sex. With us in the room. Rude!"

"They did not –"

"I'd like to think it was just another pep talk too," Cisco said, "Really I would, but there is no way 'feel the lightning' could ever be a dry phrase of encouragement."

"Dr. Wells can get a little... intense about Barry's capabilities," Caitlin pointed out reluctantly.

"Yeah, no, that was something else, Caitlin. I mean, I kept my eyes on the ceiling to give a little privacy – or pretend I wasn't there, I don't know – did you see his face?"

"Um," Caitlin said.

"I'm going to take that as 'yes, Cisco, his pupils were wide enough that it looked like he was on the good drugs, he was definitely getting off on all that speed force talk.'"

"Um."

"A literal science boner," Cisco said blankly. "Oh my god."

"Please stop talking," Caitlin said grimly.

"Okay," Cisco said after a long moment. "Okay, I think I know how we deal with this."

"Really," Caitlin said. " _Really_."

"Yes," Cisco said, nodding to the ceiling with firm resolve. "We geek out over the fact that Barry is now capable of phasing through solid objects because holy crap, that's awesome, and we never ever talk about exactly how he learned to do it. Like, ever."


	9. 100 Words: False

Harrison's hands smooth over his sides, familiar in a way that has never become casual. He always touches Barry as if it's the first or the last time, like he's trying to learn every inch of Barry's body and imprint it in his mind, the map of a conquered land. 

"Barry? Is something wrong?"

He opens his eyes to stare at Harrison's face, searching...

If this is the man who killed his mother... if this is the monster who beat him effortlessly and laughed and told him it was his destiny to lose to him... surely he'd be able to tell?


	10. Flashpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awkwardness in the Flashpoint timeline that existed for months.

Eobard is dozing when Barry arrives – he spends a lot of time dozing in this new timeline Barry has created. He'd tried everything to escape at first, examined his cage from every angle, thrown himself at the slightest opportunity for freedom. Eventually though, he'd been forced to learn patience. He calls it patience, anyway. Better by far than apathy – he's waiting, not defeated.

Barry can't live this fantasy forever. Sooner or later he's going to notice what Eobard already has, the memories of his original timeline and family and friends fading. His powers too – this is 2016 after all, or so Barry tells him, and the Flash wasn't created until 2020. One or the other has got to be something Barry isn't willing to give up.

He half-opens his eyes lazily as Barry stills in front of his cage door, yet another Big Belly Burger bag hanging loosely from one fist. To think he could grow tired of actual beef.

Eobard sighs and stretches carelessly before hauling himself upright and making his sedate way over. He knows better than to keep Barry waiting – he could just as easily not feed him at all as he could give him cold fries.

"Fancy meeting you here," he says and Barry closes his mouth and shakes his head wildly, eyes darting everywhere before he jerks his head up and stares at the ceiling.

"I – you –" he says, sputtering, a flush rising steadily across his face. He glances at Eobard and just as hastily looks away again, as if Eobard can't register the micro-glances he makes every half-second.

He waits, but Barry still doesn't hand his meal over, keeps trying so hard not to look that he stares instead, and Eobard's patience has its limits.

"Why are you looking at me like that."

"You – you're  _naked_ ," Barry squeaks out.

"Yes?" Eobard says. "I have exactly one set of clothes in this century, Barry – my suit. Did you expect me to wear it day in, day out for however long you manage to keep me prisoner here?"

"You – freckles," Barry says inanely. 

Eobard stares at him for a moment before laughing, feeling better than he has in – has it been months yet? It certainly _feels_ like months. "Do you want a closer look?"


	11. 100 Words: Disaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, he's only got his own teaching to blame.

"Ow," Barry hissed.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Eobard snapped, "did that hurt?"

"Yes!"

" _Good._ Pain is supposedly an excellent motivator. Maybe you'll actually learn for once to do as you're told."

"When the instructions come from you? Unlikely."

"Which one of us is actually capable of time travel that isn't the equivalent of an earthquake in a china shop?"

"It's bull," Barry said sullenly. Eobard stared blankly and he remembered the thing about his future apparently having no cows. "I just don't understand, we're doing exactly the same thing, we're just running really fast!"

"And yet, you are an absolute disaster."


	12. 100 Words: Replacements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eobard meets Earth-2 Barry.

The police headquarters is in the right place and there is a Barry Allen in its personnel records and that's all Eobard ever demands of a universe, really, that Barry should be in it.

...One that wears glasses and pairs bow ties with vests is a happy bonus. There is no lightning in his veins, no elemental force driving his legs, he doesn't trip over his words because he has problems with his perception of time, he's just easily flustered.

Eobard has no idea what he wants to do with him yet but he looks forward to exploring his options.


	13. Timeline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The timeline is a cup thrown on the floor and putting shards in your foot. You carry it with you.

The timeline ends.

(There is no such thing as a timeline, Eobard will tell him one day. It's just a very convenient word.)

Barry doesn't feel the moment it ends, can't pinpoint the attosecond his original timeline splinters, when he goes one way and it continues on without him. He is screaming, every muscle straining to take him faster than ever before, to try and prevent yet another disaster. It only really strikes him in the dead of night, in those moments between waking and sleep – more than one life, one mission, he has in fact lost everything.

Iris will always be standing at the bay and the water will cover her, will cover everything because Barry is no longer there to stop it –

But he's stood twenty-four hours before, before Mardon, before the Captain is attacked, before Joe is taken, before Iris...

"No, do not tell me," Dr. Wells insists when Barry turns to him for help, the way he always does. "I don't want to know anything about the future you experienced –"

He has grown so used to Dr. Wells guiding his every step, always prepared, always a ready answer for when Barry is flailing in the dark that him saying _no_ to Barry's call for help feels like one of the impossibilities he used to chase.

"Any deviation," Dr. Wells tells him urgently, "no matter how small, could result in a cataclysm –"

Keep the timeline the same, he says. No matter what Barry thinks might have happened the possible ramifications of changing it are even worse - 

That's the moment Barry finally realizes he is the single remnant of a deceased timeline, that he is alone in a way he doesn't have the words or knowledge to express.

He doesn't want to shake under Dr. Wells' piercing stare. He doesn't want look any weaker in front of someone he deeply respects but is going to go against anyway because how could he possibly make things any worse?

It's only a day, he tells himself. What difference can a single day even make?

(He has lost the Iris West who kissed him at the waterfront. He has lost the Joe West he hauled out of a lightning struck car. He has lost the Captain Singh he failed, the Dr. Wells who told him they'd talk about the after-image he saw once Mardon had been dealt with, the Cisco Ramon who said he had an idea he was going to follow up, the Caitlin Snow who wanted to tell him something about Dr. Wells, something so important even a tsunami could have waited.)

He has lost them all, everything, and they haven't been returned. He's saved them but they're not really his.

He can't let himself think like that, so he doesn't.

This timeline is his now. That's how it has to be – so he has saved them after all. How much could they change in a day? How high can the price really be, if it's just Snart learning his name?

(Just? Snart tortured Cisco's brother for it.

But that's not so terrible a thing, really, is it, compared to how many lives Barry has saved this day? Compared to the timeline that could have been?)

How high can the price really be –

(Reporter Mason Bridge Missing)

– if it's just finding out that everything he believed about someone he trusted was a lie?

*

"I don't understand your linearity," Eobard will say. "Barry -"

He will say it as Dr. Wells, rich with subtle amusement he doesn't bother to hide, knowing nobody will know its origin but him.

"You can be so much more than you are. Why are you limiting yourself?"

"I don't want to become like you," Barry will say. Eobard will not laugh and that will be even worse than if he did.

"Oh Barry," he will say, kindly, and Barry will close his eyes and curse how the fondness in his voice takes him back to the beginning. "You already are."

*

A timeline ends.

Fire rather than water, and Barry's skin aches with phantom heat, his eyes wet with remembered after-images, flesh to bone to ash, crumbling and lost to the wind as he runs, praying to some almighty force he cannot name

( _something more, part of a Speed Force,_ Thawne murmurs in his ear, his faith laid bare, the barely suppressed eagerness to share with Barry the wonder he finds in it almost reading as lust)

that the afterimage he saw means the same thing as before, that he can turn back time for a mere (vital) twenty four hours and erase this (failed) timeline.

( _It's **yours**_ )

The timeline ends, and Barry doesn't.

*

"How do you know it will always be twenty four hours?" Cisco asks. "What if one day you just – I dunno, man, you're desperate enough to break time accidentally – like, holy crap, we've got to actually properly discuss that some time you know – and you're, what, back to when you just woke up from your coma or something?"

"Dr. Wells – Thawne – Eobard," Barry corrects himself, because he knows 'Dr. Wells' offends Harry and hurts Cisco and Caitlin, and using 'Thawne' would do both to Iris, "He said -"

"Why are we trusting _anything_ that man said?"

"I have to agree with Snow there," Harry says, and Barry snaps his mouth shut, shoulders tense at the dismissal in his voice.

He takes several quick breaths and carries on anyway.

"Eobard said, when I – when I went back to... try and save my mom. He said you've got to know when you want to go. When you plan on travelling through time. When you don't, I guess – I guess I do it subconsciously? Want to turn time back just enough, to have more time to, to turn it another way?"

"Fascinating," Harry says, and there's an edge to his voice that if he was Dr. Wells Barry would know – now, with all the benefits of future knowledge and understanding – how to read.

“When did he say that?” Caitlin says, confused. “I don't remember that?”

“Oh,” Barry says, with sudden realization. “Right, of course – he couldn't have been talking normally, I wouldn't have been able to hear him. Uh… Speed Force?”

“Dude, you can't get out of everything just by saying 'Speed Force',” Cisco says firmly.

“Pretty sure I can,” Barry says, lets Cisco screw up a piece of paper and throw it at his shoulder, although he could have been halfway across the city, never mind the room, before his hand started moving.

("It must be incredible," Harry says later when they are alone, Barry about to run home to a safety and comfort Harry no longer has – "to have such power. You must feel like a god."

"No," Barry tells him. "No. I never – I just feel desperate."

"You can alter time itself," Harry says. "You can look at how your choices have played out and decide, no, I think I'll go back and change that one. And you can."

"I can," Barry agrees quietly and doesn't tell him that he grows more and more afraid that Harry's suggestion is exactly how Eobard Thawne came to be. When he no longer bothered to mourn his lost timelines and simply ran on into his new ones, when he decided to stop looking at them as second chances, just as myriad options that he knew best how to direct.

It has to be wrong, because Eobard wanted so desperately to return to one of his futures he was willing to risk the destruction of the entire universe –

_You must feel like a God._ )

*

"There's no such thing as a timeline," Eobard will say. His hair will be blond, his eyes blue. "It is a very convenient word but it means nothing when you move in our dimensions."

Barry will say nothing.

"It's holding you back. You're trapping yourself." Red lightning will crackle across his limbs, answered by yellow lightning that flares briefly across Barry's own skin. "Linear thought is like that. It's a crutch and you need to drop it, Barry."

His voice will echo, filled with exhortations to run as he says, "You can be so much more."

The heart of what Barry thinks of as Dr. Wells' voice will be there, his fond, fervent belief in Barry Allen, fastest man alive.

"I don't need your advice, Thawne," Barry will reply, feeling sick.

"Oh, ouch," Eobard will laugh, holding up palms no less dangerous for being empty. "You wound me, Barry, truly."

He will keep laughing, and Barry will hate him so deeply he will almost understand the urge Eobard must have had, the need to destroy him so utterly he would risk his entire existence to do so.

"Stop laughing," Barry will say, his hands in tight fists, vibrating with the urge to lash out at him. "Stop laughing."

"But it's so funny. Don't you understand yet?"

*

Barry's impatience is the real enemy every time he doubles back, alters his choices, proceeds along a new timeline. Words that aren't his escape his mouth, knowledge he shouldn't have propels him towards actions that can't be understood by friends who no longer have the context for them.

Why should he listen to something he's already heard, why should he wait for information he already has? He doesn't have the patience to let the timeline be – he is going to change it, after all, he has to, he always has a reason to choose a different path.

(If he didn't, if he did as Dr. Wells once said and let the timeline play out exactly as before, would it end in a perpetual loop, running past himself, running from a disaster, running back in time over and over?)

He tells them, Iris and Cisco and Caitlin and Joe and Harry and whoever else involved that needs to know. He tells – or he indicates, with his impatience, with his taking the words out of people's mouths – that he has time-traveled – that something so disastrous has occurred that the only option was to go back in time.

They assume the end of their world as they know it. They tell him there's no point in repeating disaster.

He reminds them of Eobard Thawne telling him that time doesn't like to meddled with, that it will seek to correct its course, that whatever disaster he's prevented may be replaced by something worse.

Yes, but.

Yes, but hasn't that disaster already happened? Yes, but what exactly could be worse? Yes, but isn't it better to use the chance he's been given to fix what was obviously a wrong decision? Yes, but if he didn't they would all be dead, did he really want to _definitely_ repeat that, instead of possibly?

Yes, but why would you trust Eobard Thawne, liar and villain?

He tells everyone he needs to so that he can believe the decision is not solely his, to take the course of their lives and alter it.

A day ahead and they might have had different thoughts about what should be done but that day no longer exists, not from the moment Barry stops running from his timeline and into theirs.

(Yes, a timeline ends, but Barry doesn't.)

*

"Here we are," Thawne says mildly. His after-images grin with exultation. "The end of the world as they know it."

Barry wipes at the blood on his lips, feels the bruises on his face fade away.

"Here we are," he agrees warily, watching the minute shifts of Eobard's legs, the alteration of stances as he prepares to run. "This ends now."

"No it doesn't," Eobard says.

He is already turning as Barry lunges for him, slips beneath his outstretched hand and breaks the sound barrier as they chase each other towards a blood red horizon, time shattering beneath their feet like glass.


	14. 100 Words: Time Loops

"Don't change  _anything_ ," Doctor Wells insists, and Barry gives in to the impulse that has steadily been building day after repeated day after repeated day and puts his head in his hands to muffle his scream of frustration.

"You always say that," he says when he looks up. "You always say that and I try and it always leaves me back here –"

He stops, stares at his mentor's face. For the briefest of moments – even for him – he had been almost certain Dr. Wells had been smiling, darkly amused by his frustration and helplessness.

"Again," he finishes.  _With you._


	15. Tina McGee & The Man in the Yellow Suit

Harrison does enjoy his little games.

Tina tries very hard not to resent them, reminds herself constantly that Harrison she once knew wouldn't mean anything by them, nothing more than a light-hearted play at one-upmanship he would just as happily win or lose.

But the Harrison she knows now would sooner carve at her funding while her attention was gone for a split-second and then smile blandly when she looked back and demanded to know what had happened to drive one of her best investors away.

You don't create something like S.T.A.R. Labs in the time it took Harrison without being incredibly ruthless. Tina knows that. She just can't help but mourn the man who crawled out of that wreck without Tess, the man suddenly so aware of how fragile life was that he saw no point in holding on to things like kindness, not when they could slow his meteoric rise, blunt his determined bulldozing into the history books of the future.

_You used to love this,_ she longs to say to him sometimes. _You didn't care about the practicalities, about fame, about anything other than the science of it all. You just wanted to understand, to take the sciences of the past and try to establish what the future would keep._

She's not sure he really does care about the business side of things, even now, newly – still newly, after all these years – talented and ruthless about it. Harrison's charm is always on, his mask impeccable, but somehow it all seems rather… empty. Nobody would believe now that Tina had ever seen him hunched over his desk and clawing at his face as he sobbed, choking on tears, furious at his own newly widowed grief.

Sometimes she wonders if that is what drove them apart – that she had seen that break. He certainly never let her close enough to catch even a glimpse of that Harrison again.

They operate in the same circles, of course, they always will, and she is careful to keep the competition of their companies… 'friendly', although she doesn't think Harrison really understands the term any more.

She has seen what the Harrison Wells of the past fourteen years is willing to do to those he considers his enemies.

( _You never used to have enemies,_ she wants to say, maybe a little plaintive. _All competition was good competition as far as you were concerned; you thought the whole point of it was to spur everyone on into reaching for something more, something even better. You'd have been pleased whoever managed to succeed._ )

She still can't think of any good reason for Harrison to want the tachyon device, but she has next to no idea how to deal with a man who can move faster than sound, she has no idea how his abilities even work, and she doesn't want any more of her staff hurt –

She tells herself she'd rather lose the device entirely than have to bury anyone else, however much she resents Harrison's new… protege, the cruelest blade Harrison has ever waved so negligently in her direction. The boy had been all of her lost friend's bright enthusiasm and wonder anew... only to demonstrate all over again the gut-wrenching kick it was to see it so easily subsumed beneath the ruthlessness of the Harrison Wells she couldn’t call anyone's friend.

She wonders if she's done the right thing as she hurries down S.T.A.R. Labs halls – only Harrison would be so arrogant as to continue working in plain sight, in a facility that should not be operational at all – trying not to think of what she might find.

She halts in the doorway of what Harrison had jokingly called the cortex, staring.

"Tina," Harrison says, looking at her over Dr. Snow's shoulder, and Dr. Snow flinches and whirls around, looking spooked, expecting an attack.

Tina keeps staring at Harrison, at the stillness of his legs stretched out, the sudden reinforcement of utter immobility that somehow seems even more blatant than when in his wheelchair. At the deep bruises, the blood being wiped from his face to allow better gauging of the severity of the cuts, the stiff way he holds his torso –

"I assure you, you didn't need to hurry here. I was going to tell you as soon as possible about your tachyon device being stolen –"

"My God, Harrison," she snaps, jolted into movement, covering the distance in long strides she hopes conveys just how angry she is with him right now. "You should be in a hospital – no offense, Dr. Snow –"

"None taken," she murmurs, still looking haunted and subdued – did she see it? See with her own eyes not just the aftermath but the event of Harrison being beaten by that _monster_?

"– do you think I care about the device right now? You look terrible –"

"Charming," Harrison says, his ghastly attempt at a smile splitting his lip open all over again. 

"– you look like another good blow would finish you off – I – I – oh, honestly, Harrison, I didn't think you could be so _stupid_ , what could have possessed you, putting yourself in a situation where that thing could even grab you –"

"Hey!" Ramon says indignantly, insulted for his boss or for what was clearly his work that failed so stupendously to protect him. Tina glares at him and he quails, muttering a quick, "Nope, never mind," under his breath, the set of his shoulders defensive. She glances around the room – Harrison had never let her see it when S.T.A.R. Labs was officially running, just as she would never let him into the heart of her operations, but even so it _feels_ barren – expecting for some reason to see Mr. Allen, though he has no reason to be there, no official association with S.T.A.R. Labs beyond Harrison's obvious high regard for him.

"Dr. Wells!"

Speak of the devil – she watches Barry Allen skid to halt, chest heaving as if he has run all the way from the police station, eyes wide and stricken.

"Sorry," he says, lurching towards Harrison, moving a little as if he is the one that has taken a beating. "I'm so – I should have – I didn't –"

"Barry," Harrison says soothingly, and Tina blinks back something agonized in her throat because he almost sounds like her best friend again.

He reaches up and casually grasps the boy's shoulder as if he doesn't look askance at anyone trying to touch him these days, rocking it a little, and Allen sways with the movement, looking weak with relief, as if the touch reassures him that despite how bad it looks Harrison will be fine. 

"I'm fine," Harrison tells him and Tina laughs bitterly, making them blink at her as if just realizing she still exists – or in Allen's case, she supposes, just realizing she was ever in the room at all.

"I'm very sorry your tachyon device was stolen," Allen says earnestly, bowing his head a little as if it is somehow his fault he can't stop a man moving fast as lightning. Tina is abruptly furious at his priorities, Harrison's priorities repeated, at the youthful mirror he is for the man her friend should never have become.

"How many times must I say it?" Tina demands and Allen stares at her, wide-eyed. "I would sooner lose a prototype, no matter how potentially important, than be forced to bury anyone for its sake. What kind of person do you take me for?"

The answer is obvious and she hates herself for knowing it as she sees them glance at each other in perfect understanding – like them.


	16. Role Reversal AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Eobard Thawne is The Flash and it turns out his brilliant new hire is his stalker from the future...

The Flash was not the kind of hero Eobard Thawne wanted or expected to be. He'd never expected to be a hero at all, although he supposed being a prominent figure in scientific advancement might have made him one to some. An actual superhero in a tripolymer suit, however? Not so much.

He was all about the advancement of society and the creation of the future, he loved being a scientist and he loved his work. The thought of running around in a costume trying to solve societal problems by punching them never even occurred to him as a possibility for his future.

And then lightning had struck.

On the plus side, he supposed, imposter syndrome no longer troubled him at all at his actual day job. He spent his time now worrying that people would realize that the Flash was a fraud, a mirage they had made out of his actions to make them feel better. Hero was such a heavy word and Eobard didn't like wearing it, didn't like people applying it to him, to the Flash, because he didn't care like they obviously thought he did. He thought most people were... ignorant. Ill-informed and unwilling to be informed.

He had amazing abilities and if in the process of trying to learn more about them he ended up helping people - well, he might as well. He felt like a fake every time he put on the suit, always wondering at heart if maybe the universe hadn't made a mistake, if there wasn't someone out there who could use his power so much better.

He didn't know what to think at the revelation that someone could. They just weren't using it  _well_.

He sped up and pretended he couldn't feel the itch between his shoulderblades, remembering the stranger in his yellow suit and his laughter as he said he'd tear everything Eobard cared for apart.


	17. Soulmarks AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The soulmark AU where anybody and everybody who has an impact on your life leaves a visible mark with skin-to-skin contact. The more profound the influence the more intense the mark and it doesn't necessarily mean being soulmates – bitterest enemies leave marks as deep as any 'soulmate'. Except that at first contact it would be impossible to know it meant enemies instead of lovers or friends or found family or any of the countless positive ways someone might influence a life...

"He's a little creepy," is what Iris says about Dr. Wells when Barry tries and fails not to get overexcited about the particle accelerator S.T.A.R. Labs is building.

"It's not his fault," Barry says insistently. "It doesn't matter – have you seen the kind of stuff the particle accelerator will help us learn?"

"Uh-huh," Iris says indulgently, meaning no matter how many times you tell me Barry, it's not going to stick, just be glad I find your nerdiness endearing. "Still, though."

Barry sighs, almost resentful on behalf of a man he's never met.

Harrison Wells is famous for his brilliance, his innovation, his passionate devotion to science and his single-minded intensity aimed at crafting the future itself. 

Harrison Wells is infamous for losing every single Impression with the death of his wife, and worse, having never received any since.

Dr. Wells is a great and influential man – almost everyone he meets ends up marked with the vivid red that has become his contact-color since Tess Morgan's death – but his skin remains blank no matter who touches him, and in the circles Dr. Wells moves in he must have had skin contact with some incredible people, men and women who would deeply Impress anyone else.

Even though it's public record that none of his injuries were life-threatening there's still speculation that he died in the crash too and was revived, and that's the reason the Impressions of his life disappeared, that his color changed, that he can no longer be Impressed.

( _Blank_ went with that. Of course, the complete reason the movie gave was that 'Professor Garrison Fell' was no longer human but a demon that had clawed its way out of hell to take over the empty body, but that was horror movies for you.)

Barry feels sorry for him sometimes but mostly he just feels insulted for him. Dr. Wells is _brilliant_ , he advances the understanding of science in leaps and bounds. He is the first and last name in advanced particle research and in another world that is all that would matter. Maybe it's (more than) a little creepy he can't seem to be touched by the world around him but what does that matter when he's about to open up a whole new world in experimental physics?

"You'll still come to the opening with me though, right?" He asks and Iris sighs so fondly he imagines he can feel his Impression of her aching with it.

"Of course I will. You're so excited, I half expect you to faint like a groupie at a rock concert, someone's going to have to catch you," she teases.

"Well so long as I've got you to catch me," Barry grins, pressing his marked hand to his forehead and pretending to swoon. "Oooh, Miss West, I do declare I feel a fit of the vapors coming on."

"Oh, Mr. Allen," Iris returns promptly in her sternest romance hero voice, belied by her eyes, bright with barely suppressed laughter. "Sit, you delicate thing, before you do yourself some damage."

Barry collapses into his seat, laughing, as Iris beams at him. "It's going to be great," he tells her, and her smile softens.

"I might not understand half of what you get babbling on about but I can tell just how much you're looking forward to this. I'm sure it will be awesome, just for you." She puts a finger to her chin mock-thoughtfully and adds teasingly, "Even if he is a little creepy."


	18. Captive

Barry fights, he always fights – he will always be the Flash at his core, you could change almost every aspect of his life and still some spark would linger – but he has also been, if Eobard does say so himself, exceptionally well-trained.

There will always be that millisecond he sees Harrison Wells first, sees the man he trusted, hero worshiped, the man he near-instinctively turned to whenever he didn't know what to do and then obeyed whatever order he was given.

_Run, Barry, run._

One thousandth of a second is more than enough time to lose a fight before it has begun.

Barry is capable of incredible things but he relied on Doctor Wells for so long Eobard's not sure he even knows how to think for himself regarding his abilities, suspects he will always need to be prompted if not outright told what he can do.

Eobard is currently faster and stronger physically but that is the real power he has over Barry, will always have over Barry now.

His hand spans Barry's throat as he pushes him back against the wall, flexes his fingers and then presses them in even harder. Barry claws at his wrist with one hand and his shoulder with the other, mouth opening and closing in rough spluttering gasps against Eobard's own. Eobard hums, pushes his knee between Barry's legs and forces them further apart and Barry –

Barry vibrates against him in the same way Eobard once watched him do for Linda Park, instinctive and involuntary.

"Oh, Barry," Eobard sighs, shakes his head a little in one of Harrison Wells' exasperated mentor gestures. "I've really neglected that aspect of your training, haven't I?"

Barry's eyes start to flutter shut, body going limp beneath Eobard's – nine seconds faster than expected – and Eobard loosens his grip a little. "Never mind," he says, consciously slowing his perception of time to enjoy every little flicker of Barry's pupils, every beat of his pulse against his fingers, every minuscule shudder of his body against his. "You know I'm always happy to teach you."


	19. 100 Words: Irritation

"I think Barry has been doing very well with his twelve step program for compulsive timeline alteration," Gideon said optimistically. "I really think the lesson might stick this time."

"Ha," Eobard said bitterly.

"Just so long as he doesn't face another Zoom, I should think," Gideon admitted, still sounding hellishly cheerful. "Or Rival. Or Savitar. Or –"

"I will snap the neck of the next one, I swear," Eobard said. "There is a code, why are they all going after  _my_  Flash? He has me, the Reverse Flash position is filled, imitators need not apply! Let them find their own!"


	20. Ridiculous Multiverse Travels

Eobard has long held the idea that every speedster has a particular talent given by the Speed Force… other than the obvious. Some are exceptionally talented at the defensive applications of their powers, such as speed mirages or vibrating at the right frequency to seem invisible, even to another speedster. Some are gifted at the more offensive such as throwing lightning or creating a sonic boom with a snap of their fingers.

Eobard is quick to start thinking that his particular talent is time travel. Some speedsters never time travel, simply can't do it even with mechanical aid. Some can't risk more than a day or two in either direction without time wraiths descending. Eobard travels back over a hundred years before his birth and only the Flash punches him in the face for it.

...He might have preferred it coming from the Speed Force, actually.

He tests his hypothesis to the limits, of course, pushes and pushes until he feels safe calling it a theory – space-time loves him. What would get another speedster trapped in the Speed Force or devoured by wraiths barely gets him a murmur of protest.

Having reached this conclusion, the first thing Eobard decides to do with his near-immunity to the potential consequences of rampant time travel is abuse it thoroughly. Second is to see if it extends to dimensional travel.

It does, as it turns out. An entire multiverse unfolds for him, infinite. 

As is the habit of humans when faced with something impossible for the mind to truly comprehend he makes that concept a little easier to bear by limiting it – there is a multiverse and of those infinite earths there is a finite number with Barry Allens to be found on them, with or without the powers that make the Flash. What to do is easy after that. Eobard has only ever had one great passion in his life – chasing the Flash. To learn from him, to run with him, to mess with him, to fight him, to destroy him... it's all the same in the end. Why change the hobby of a lifetime?

Unfortunately, as with time travel, the more he does it the easier he finds it, and the easier it is for him to do entirely without meaning to.

He picks himself up, dusts himself off, and taps into the Speed Force just enough to try and orient himself. He is some forty - no, forty-one Earths off where he should be, and he sighs as he opens his eyes again, already exhausted by the thought of how much energy he's going to need to get back. Of course that's when the Flash shows up.

He will die before he ever confesses that he squeaks at the sight of Earth-42's Flash. He looks like a cartoon animal, all eyes, and he's  _tiny_ , barely reaching Eobard's knee.

"NewFlash?" 42-Flash chirps, so excited his words blur together and good lord, do his eyes actually sparkle? "HinewFlash!I'mBarry!Whatearthareyoufrom?Isitnice?Ibetit'snice!"

"Adorable," Eobard says faintly. He drops to the ground and sits, the better to see Earth-42 Flash's face. It shouldn't work, damn it. It should look grotesque and odd and disproportional to Eobard's eyes and instead it somehow hits every Disney-crafted 'you find this cute, yes you do' button society has ingrained in his head. It's like a sledgehammer of adorable compared to the wistful tap of pretty Eobard still occasionally gets struck by when looking at his own and similar Barry Allens.

"Wowyou'retall," little Flash says enthusiastically. "Iseverybodyonyourearthagiant?"

"Um," says Eobard. Earth-42 Barry's costume is incredibly bright and Eobard thinks of his own Flash's suit and wonders how he ever got the nickname of Scarlet Speedster when it seems so dim and dark in comparison. "Yes? No. I mean... is everybody on your earth the same... proportions as you?"

"Duh," Barry says, which is fair, given that when Eobard manages to tear his eyes away from his face he starts to see how everything around them is built to the Flash's size.

He shakes his head and gets to his feet. Earth-42's Flash blinks up at him guilelessly. His eyes seem to take up half his face and now Eobard is definitely certain he can see little stars glittering in them.

Eobard yanks his vibrating hand behind his back. "It's a pleasure meeting you," he says a little helplessly, unable to take his eyes off the tiny little lightning bolts on the Flash's cowl. Full size they're an invitation to grab and stab and suddenly he wants to coo at them. He's a disgrace of a supervillain, an absolute disgrace. 

He hopes the Flash fell out of the Speed Force into a cesspool of a universe when he hit him, he really does.


	21. Lonely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of a longer unfinished fic.

"Are you lonely?" Barry blurted out before he could stop himself and froze as Dr. Wells looked up from his glass, feeling all over again the sudden impact of having his full attention. 

He actually managed to convince himself that he was used to it sometimes, the weight of that stare – that it was something it was possible to become immune to through exposure. Then there would be another moment Dr. Wells would really look at him and he'd remember every single quote about his famously piercing gaze and think they were all seriously underselling it.

"Why would you think that?"

Barry shrugged and felt a vibratory little shiver run over him, an urge to just... run around the room and say every sentence from a different place, as if he could dodge the emotional weight of a conversation as easily as someone's eyes. "Maybe because I just came in and found you drinking alone while staring at my suit?"

"I hadn't actually started," Dr. Wells said, raising his glass in mock-salute, "but give me a moment."

Barry didn't take the glass from his hand and put it on the desk. He could almost feel the chill of it against his fingers, hear the clink as he set it down, but he stared at it and let the urge fade. Dr. Wells would definitely not be impressed with any kind of mother-henning. He tried to think of something to say. "I, um. Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, thank you," Dr. Wells said, his expression softening a little, and there was the reason Barry thought he was used to his gaze, he decided. If he didn't know Harrison Wells, if he was still a stranger to him, he would have no idea those eyes could ever feel like anything other than a mental dissection and wouldn't be so surprised when they did.

"Okay," Barry said. "Just... you know I'm – we're here for you, right?"

"Mmhm," Dr. Wells said. His eyes drifted back to the Flash suit, the lightning bolt upon its chest, and Barry felt the loss of his attention like a sudden chill, the lifting of some invisible weight. It was probably weird how odd he felt without it. 

He watched Dr. Wells take a sip of his drink and forced his eyes away when he found them lingering on the movement of his throat as he swallowed.

"There isn't much I won't do to keep you safe," Wells murmured and Barry stared at him, at the near-full glass in his hand and the way he held it as he stared up at the mannequin, tracing the lines of Barry's suit with his eyes.

"I get that," Barry said, hoping he didn't sound patronizing or anything, because Dr. Wells might not personally face metahumans every other Tuesday but he was still brave and good and so unbelievably dedicated to Barry, to the Flash, to helping him help others – 

"I know you think you do," Dr. Wells said and smiled like he knew it sounded ridiculous, a man in a wheelchair protecting a superhero. "Don't say I didn't warn you."


	22. 100 Words: Things You're Not Proud Of

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Crisis on Earth-X.

"You let him go," Harry said flatly.

"I – yes, I mean--"

"You. Let .Thawne. Go."

"He's been erased from time itself and  _still_  come back," Barry protested, "it wouldn't solve anything--"

"Oh my god – maybe it wouldn't, but did you consider that maybe breaking his legs and sticking him in the pipeline might keep him from killing people a little longer than just, I don't know, letting him go?!"

"I know I messed up – I don't... I don't know why I did it," Barry said miserably but he couldn't look at Harrison Wells' face while he said it.


	23. The Unfortunate Mason Bridge

After the particle accelerator explosion, after the clean-up, after the ten volume report concluding that there was no way anyone could have foreseen the accident, Mason Bridge watched Harrison Wells slip away from public view with an ease that seemed remarkable, given how famous – and now _in_ famous – he was. 

He'd almost call it a retreat, Wells hiding in his condemned facility, surrounded by the ashes of his life's work and all the lives it destroyed, but somehow it didn't feel that way. To Mason, it didn't look like Wells was licking his wounds but like he was preparing. (Nesting, like a spider, patiently waiting for the right time, the right fly.)

He did a series of articles about the human aspect of Harrison Wells' hubris, the men and women and their families destroyed by one man's arrogance. There were more than his editor would allow him column space, more than Mason had the energy to face. He'd almost be willing to bet Harrison Wells didn't even know their names, except that he knew Wells was definitely aware of one of them. He'd heard about a young man being struck by lightning the night of the explosion, heard he'd nearly died half a dozen times and had been in a coma ever since, but it was just one tragic story among dozens – he didn't know until Wells snatched him away that it was the most important one of all.

Wells coerced the family somehow – bribed them, Mason suspected, though he was sure only Wells understood that was what was what he had done – and the comatose body vanished into the remnants of S.T.A.R. Labs, to be 'cared for'. Mason didn't blame them - hospital bills were expensive, far too expensive for one beat cop and daughter at college to handle when it involved keeping a coma patient alive, one who might be in hospital for weeks, or as it turned out, months.

He bet Wells offered to take care of the kid out of the kindness of his heart.

Barry Allen was the boy's name. A lowly CSI tech, twenty-four and looked like he should still be in high school. A murdered mother, a father in prison – Mason stared at his neatly typed notes and wondered what Wells saw when he looked at him, what made him the one victim worth Wells' personal time and attention. What was so different about Barry Allen that Harrison Wells was willing to go to such drastic measures? Nobody else harmed that night got a personal visit from the man responsible. They and their families were compensated, sure, but Wells didn't drag out his conscience out from whatever depths he'd stashed it and provide individual, round the clock medical care for any of them in redress.

He couldn't have known if the kid would ever wake up – what had he stood to gain? Good will? Glad the family might be to have been spared paying for Allen's extensive and complex care, but he really doubted they looked at Wells with anything approaching gratitude.

There had to be something. Harrison Wells was not a man who did anything without keeping some advantage to gain in mind.

Mason couldn't shake the idea that there was something profound that he was missing, some connection that would explain everything – the particle accelerator, the explosion, all of it. The irritating little thought came back the first time he saw Wells and the - miraculously alive, miraculously well - Barry Allen together.

Mason had seen Wells smiling at Allen – a wry twist of the mouth that said a lot more than he'd bet Wells thought it did about his sense of humor – and hadn't quite believed it, but it turned out that Harrison Wells smiled at Allen often, and to all appearances, genuinely. Amused, encouraging – sometimes even weirdly  _proud_ , as if he had any reason to be proud of a young man he'd met by unlucky coincidence.

He really couldn't understand it. He tried his hardest but he just couldn't see what it was about Allen that captured Harrison Wells so utterly, that made it feel like the Wells of the past fourteen years had in fact been nothing more than a placeholder, all his truly impressive ambitions and triumphs cover for the truth of how uninterested he was in a world that didn't have Barry Allen looking at him like he hung the moon.

He followed Allen with his gaze even when Allen wasn't looking back at him. Mason would be willing to swear on a stack of bibles that he'd see something creep into that kindly look he wore so frequently (so falsely) for Allen then, something dark and proprietary. Mason didn't really want to think about it, remembering how many months the kid had slept completely helpless under those eyes, but he was a reporter, and Wells hid the story of his career, he just knew it.

Mason knew many a journalist prone to rhapsodizing about the force Harrison Wells was capable of putting into his gaze. Having been on the receiving end once or twice himself, he freely acknowledged there wasn't really much hyperbole to the claims of feeling 'pinned' or 'struck' or 'relentlessly, ruthlessly examined'.

Wells didn't _do_ what he did with Allen, weaken the psychological impact he was well aware of by breaking away to look at some young man on the other side of the room, usually distracted and oblivious to his presence.

Mason was going to get to the bottom of this if it killed him.


	24. Time Vault

_You won,_  Barry tells him and Eobard has never wanted to believe anything more in his life. It's exactly what he wants to hear – of course it is, that's what makes it such a good lie, such an excellent attempt at manipulation. He has to congratulate himself bitterly because there's really no doubt where Barry learned the skill.

If he made it home why would Barry risk his timeline to return to Eobard at this point when he could simply follow him into that future with far less risk? Because he can't, because there is no future Eobard to ask, he's dead, he's  _lost_. He will never best the Flash, never kill him, the proof sits before him now.

And he has the gall, this future Flash, to risk the timeline and Eobard's own Barry, all to ask his enemy for help for a future he will never see.

"I trained you very well, didn't I?" Eobard murmurs and Barry blinks at him warily.  _You still can't go one step without needing me to tell you what to do._

"Yes," Barry says. "You did." The way his face twists, the desperate look of need and loathing, Eobard can't stand knowing that it's not his triumph but his death that's put it there. "You – you're the best, Thawne. You know the Speed Force, how to manipulate it. I need to know how."

Eobard sighs. It's very flattering, Barry's ridiculously obvious appeal to his ego, his careful implication that he remains at heart Eobard's student, Eobard's prized little learner hero. There are still echoes of that boy, even in this sadder, more knowledgeable and less rooted Barry Allen, and he can't help but love the sound of his name – his real name – in that familiar voice.

He lets his eyes linger on Barry's splayed legs, the futile vibratory little shivers of his hand against the cuff, the way he follows Eobard's every move with intensely focused eyes. He has in his possession now a Barry Allen that is and is not his own, a Barry he doesn't have to be careful with, a Barry that knows him, a Barry from a timeline that if he has his way will never come to pass. A Barry he can keep, because –

"You really haven't thought this through, have you?"

Barry stills in the way only a speedster can, taking breaths between microseconds, invisible to an ordinary human eye.

"I don't need you," he says, and sees the panic that lances through Barry, the pain. Even knowing who Eobard is and what he has done he still expects his help, treats it as foregone conclusion. "Do I? Not this you."

Barry starts to say something, some bold new bluff that Eobard really hopes he'll get the chance to see his Flash learn, and he cuts him off with a hand at his throat, squeezing slightly.

"I don't need you," he repeats, stepping between Barry's open legs and nudging them further apart with his foot. "But I'm sure you can think of something I want."


	25. 100+ Words: Hunger

Eobard doesn't need food like he used to. He knows that.

He can take the energy he requires from the Speed Force, no longer needs his tasteless but efficient energy bars, the inevitable extension of the food of his century – nutrient enhanced, synthetically flavored, genetically designed and purified, carefully calculated to exactly meet requirements.

He doesn't  _need_  food like he did before but God does he want it, watching Barry lick his fingers free of spice and salt on the other side of his cage door, the air full of the inimitable smell of the food of this century – real meat and grease and so many forgotten flavorings, all of it strong enough to make Eobard's mouth water, his stomach seize and cramp as small as his cage while his hunger roars as vast as the Speed Force.


	26. Dirty Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cisco is a troll.

"I dunno, if we get really desperate about getting Barry to go faster we could play that recording of Dr. Wells dirty talking him to speedgasm."

Barry had trouble with things like seconds and minutes now but he was pretty sure that the dead silence that followed was long enough to be uncomfortable even for non-speedsters.

"I... don't want to know," Oliver decided.

"Okay then," Felicity said brightly, "I guess I'll have to be the one willing to admit I'm very curious. And also not sure if I want to know, except really yes, because that sounds... interesting."

"Oh, it was," Cisco agreed, nodding earnestly. 

Barry covered his face with his hands and reminded himself that if he ran he would have no idea how bad it could get. "Please," he muttered. "Cisco, why."

"I mean, speedgasm, huh," Felicity said and Barry didn't need to lift his head away and actually face her to know that she was giving him a speculative look.

"It wasn't like that," he said, and Cisco gave a snort so incredulous Barry decided he had to have been rehearsing it, just waiting for the perfect moment of absolute humiliation to use it.

"Uh, yeah, it was exactly like that."

"It  _wasn't_ ," Barry insisted. "Wells – Thawne talked me through things all the time, he –"

"Feel the lightning, Barry," Cisco said in an exaggerated croon that didn't sound remotely like any Wells they'd met and Barry finally lifted his head from his hands to glare at him.

"No," Oliver said, sounding fascinated and appalled in equal measure.

"Yes," Cisco insisted. "Caitlin, back me up."

"The words were said," Caitlin said, and shrugged at Barry's betrayed look. "Not  _quite_  like that –"

"Thank you," Barry said.

" - but close. More extremely intimate than sexual, I'd say, but that's, you know, a fine line."

"I take back that thank you," Barry said. "I take back all the thank yous."


	27. Pettiness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eobard's levels of pettiness are unrivaled.

If Barry had ever bothered to ask, Eobard might have told him the trick to time travel (other than the Speed Force’s blessing, which Eobard was quite certain he had and equally sure Barry did not).

It was to start small and, antithetical to a speedster, slow.

Go back twenty-four hours at most, change only one thing, watch the ripples of that single change radiate. Do it again. Acclimatize the timeline to your presence until it accepted the little changes you made as part of its own movements. Until you could go back farther and farther, make your alterations bolder, until two hundred years was a stroll in the park and killing the founder of a billion-dollar scientific organization with facilities across the world had all the effect of a pebble tossed into the ocean.

A few hours. A single change. Constant practice.

Eobard hit the off button on Barry’s alarm clock with a grin.


	28. 'Accidental' Sugar Daddy/Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The way to a man's heart doesn't always need to be a hand phased through the chest, especially when playing such a long game.

To be honest, it had taken Barry far longer to notice than it should have. He figured he could forgive himself for forgetting to ask about hospital bills after waking up, considering he'd just discovered he had actual superpowers. He should definitely have wondered about having even his terrible 'deathtrap' of an apartment to go back to, though, and he just… hadn't.

He'd woken up from a coma and he'd been told nine months had passed but it had been in the people he'd felt the changes, not his surroundings. Iris was dating Eddie now, his friends outside work had drifted away from him, the attempts to reconnect so incredibly awkward with all their guilty glances at his face and strained questions about how he was doing when they'd thought, you know, nine months in a coma...

"It was like you were dead," Daphne said. "At first we thought – well, you kept flatlining and we had to hope you'd be fine, you'd get better, that's what you do with things like that. But when you stopped flatlining all the time and just… slept, you know, it just… wore all the hope out. You weren't dying any more, but you weren't getting better and it just got harder and harder to see you ever waking up. Eventually it was just like 'oh, right, we should visit Barry's still breathing corpse today', do you know how hard that was? We couldn't, _I_ couldn't do it, Barry, I'm sorry."

"Okay," Barry said. "No, I get it, that's… okay."

The truth was, he didn't want to think about it. The idea that he could have woken up and had to deal with the loss of his apartment and income on top of everything else was too much. He'd walked back into the station and it was like he'd never left. He'd gone to his apartment and it was the same. It had been grounding, comforting, to have things that hadn't changed when everything else had, so he hadn't asked because if he did, it wouldn't be any more. Someone had quietly arranged it so that he didn't have to think about it, not with such bigger things going on – superspeed and metahumans and heroics – so he didn't.

The food was where he should really have started to get a clue. Then again, nobody called him the smartest man alive.

Cisco's bars might have all the calories he needed to keep his metabolism up but he definitely preferred having them as an accompaniment to eating actual food rather than a substitute. The trouble with that, though, was that he was kind of worried his salary would end up buying nothing but food and he'd still have to deal with that faint gnawing ache in his stomach all the time while wondering how he was going to pay his rent.

He told Doctor Wells about it and the man blinked and told him to stop buying a hundred burgers at once then. Barry was actually kind of hurt, even though he knew Dr. Wells couldn't really understand. He probably thought about it very logically – Cisco's high-calorie protein bars provided what Barry needed, things like enjoyment shouldn't really come into a decision-making process that revolved around necessity.

"That's not what I meant," Dr. Wells said, looking at Barry as if he knew exactly what he was thinking. "I would never ask you to fuel your heroics only on Cisco's high-calorie protein bars." He made a face as if he understood what terrible depths Barry's mind had sunk to, imagining having nothing but protein bars and normal human sized meals for the rest of his life. "If you feel your income won't cover the expenses your metabolism requires for acting as the Flash, that's fine. I can."

"You...?"

"Will consider it a necessary expense in the running of S.T.A.R. Labs. Next time you feel like twenty pizzas, just tell me. I'll pay for them. You can stop worrying about having to move back to Joe's for any reason other than wanting to."

"I, uh, that's... um... thanks?" Barry said weakly.

Dr. Wells shook his head and smiled and Barry just knew he was going to play it off as no big deal, that he'd give his reasons and they'd sound very practical and very matter of fact. Barry could probably think of them all himself if he just ignored the little voice in his head that wanted Dr. Wells to be doing something for him for his sake rather than the Flash's.

"Really," Barry insisted, cutting off any attempt Dr. Wells might have made to speak. "Thanks. I – could we? Now?"

Dr. Wells eyebrows went up, his amused smile stretching into something softer and brighter, pleased. "Now?"

"Yeah, I... didn't eat breakfast?"

"You should eat breakfast," Dr. Wells said without a hint of actual scolding, as if he knew Barry was lying to have an excuse to eat with him. He probably did – since becoming the Flash there was no way Barry could forget any meal of the day, let alone the first. "Of course, Barry."

Barry beamed at him, feeling almost weightless he was so relieved – he hadn't realized he'd been worrying so much about it. Or maybe he was just happy at what it said, that Dr. Wells wanted to deal with it, even if it was just because it would look bad, him fainting all over the place.

"You really don't mind?"

"I really don't," Dr. Wells said. "I doubt feeding you will be biggest expense I'll ever face concerning you, all things considered."

"Probably," Barry agreed, a little shamefaced and definitely still not about to ask what the materials for his suit cost. "But thanks anyway."

Maybe it was selfish, maybe he should tell Dr. Wells not to bother, that he could handle it – he could, really, it wouldn't be nice but he could learn to live with only those bars providing the extra calories – but it was just so much easier to let it become just another thing Dr. Wells took care of, like the ideas for new uses of his speed and all the calculations behind them.

The smile Dr. Wells gave him when he offered the first slice of pizza, the new warmth there he didn't know how to read – he tucked that away to think about later.


	29. Nora West-Allen, Looking At Someone's Back

Nora West-Allen has been chasing her father her whole life.

That's what speedsters do, she guesses. They pick a goal and they run it down, whatever it takes. She's not even sure how old she was when she made her father hers.

He's everything she hoped and still not quite what she expected. He's wary, and he should be – the time Nora has spent in the Flash museum surrounded by his failings and triumphs, she knows his history – but he's also calm and compassionate and... young. He's the same age as her, really. 

Iris West-Allen will go gray, will get laugh lines and smile lines and a sad faraway look when she talks about the man Nora doesn't remember. She is Nora's mother, has always been Nora's mother, will be Nora's mother for the rest of her life.

Barry Allen has always been The Flash first.


	30. Worse

Eobard laughs as Barry slams him into a wall, laughs as they struggle, laughs as he lets Barry overpower him. "Going to hurt me, Barry? Try and remember, no permanent damage."

It's the closest thing to a rule they have about this thing between them and only Barry has come close to breaking it. "Worse," he decides, uses Eobard's own speedster-proof cuffs against him to make sure he stays where Barry wants him – he knows how much Eobard hates having his back to him.

"Worse?" Eobard says, looking over his shoulder to keep eye contact, still grinning.

"Worse," Barry repeats, brushing a feather-light hand down his spine. "I'll be gentle."


End file.
